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Wednesday, 20 November 2013

Are we in 2014 yet?

A good friend of mine has recently been entitling their blog posts as a countdown to 2014. On a number of occasions, and this is meant as an utter compliment to them, (I will never be as clever as them) they have been so good that I’ve come away with a headache. Seriously, I think goldfish have more brainpower than I do.I cannot do complicated topics. It just hurts my head!

Anyway, I’ve gone off on a bit of a tangent there. What I have loved is the countdown that has come with each post’s title. Each one is a day nearer to the end of 2013. A year, which has for me, sucked.

I started it off ill and asleep. Unable to celebrate at all. Part of which was down to me drinking too much between Christmas and New Year which caused my immune system to refuse to function. Thus, I got a virus and it wiped me out. Totally my fault. Isn’t everything?

From here the events of the year got progressively worse. It still doesn’t feel like it’s the right time to go into too much detail on here. (Yet if you know me through Twitter or Facebook you’ll probably have grasped what happened). I’ve drafted many a post about it all. But they just don’t seem to ‘sit right’. In a nutshell, forgive me for being quite so crass. My best friend lost his life. He suffered a heart attack and even though he was only 20 years old, he never recovered. In losing him I lost someone I considered to be as close as a brother to me. I lost a friend for life. Someone who understood me, never judged me and wasn’t afraid tell me if I was wrong. Without him, this world is a much darker and lonelier place for me.

Whilst I’m spilling everything out onto the page, let’s get something else out there. I see no shame in it.

I am a sufferer of depression. I am a depressive. (Possibly undiagnosed manic depression). If this is too much for you then I’d encourage you to stop reading. If you aren’t sure what exactly suffering from depression entails, then I would encourage you to read this website. I don’t go through everything on there but there are a number of things which make up each episode.

For years of my life, I went on without medication. Without really knowing what was wrong with me. I just thought these feelings were just me. Sometimes I could cope, other times I couldn’t.

All it took was for a nurse to listen to me one day. And from there a number of really wonderful GP’s have listened more, discussed options and made me generally feel better. They’ve prescribed anti depressants. They’ve given me counselling sessions. These have helped me understand and fight the chemical imbalance in my brain and to try and ignore the negative thinking it does. I would certainly advise anyone who feel that they are struggling, to seek help. Don’t be afraid to ask. Keep on asking if you feel no one’s listening. Because somebody will, I promise you. Being on the tablets does not make you any less of a person. In fact, they will help you make you, you again.

I may never be ‘cured’. I will always have this negative voice battering away at me. But I’m never going to be able to fight it without help.

I’m currently experiencing quite a horrible bout of depression right now. So this post might feel quite raw and blunt as a result. Writing doesn’t come quite so easily anymore. The negative side of my brain tells me I can’t do it. That I’ve no talent in it, that no one will read it. And if they do, they’ll just think it’s rubbish. So if you’ve made it this far with me, thank you. I really do appreciate it, a lot.

Getting this all down on paper has been hard, typing it up hurts quite a bit.

I miss Luke each day. The same close friend I mentioned in the opening of this post, helped me realise today that, no matter long a person lives for, they live ‘a lifetime’. We all get a lifetime. No matter if we live 20 years or 80 years. It’s just up to each one of us to live it and fight those demons. I’m getting a bit cliche now so I’ll sign off.

Positive posts will resume soon, I’ve got two weeks to try and feel better anyway so this blog might become a bit of a haven for my thoughts. Or not.